


i couldn't name the feeling carried in that voice

by BarnesAndNobleFanpage



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guitars, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I Wrote This While Listening to Hozier's Music, One Shot, Pre-Canon, References to Canon, Short, Short One Shot, Some was written during class, Song references (find them all!), most of it anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:48:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27021544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarnesAndNobleFanpage/pseuds/BarnesAndNobleFanpage
Summary: was it that or just the act of making noise that brought you joy?ORJulie finds a guitar in her studio
Relationships: Julie Molina & Julie Molina's Mother
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	i couldn't name the feeling carried in that voice

**Author's Note:**

> Do I know shit about guitars or healthy coping mechanisms? No. Did I write this anyway? Yes.

When she said she hadn't sung in a year, Julie wasn't lying. Julie was lying, however, about being in the studio. She had come out to the garage with its chairs on the ceiling, it's loft, and vibrant plants right after the funeral. It looked the same, but it felt different. Much like Julie herself.

She would come out to the garage and simply stand in the middle of the floor. The couch had since been dubbed “The Crying Couch” in her mind. The amount of tears staining its fabric seemed to have permanent effects. Sometimes, Julie still got the itch to play. She never touched the piano, though. It felt wrong. The instrument had been her mother’s. Too much pain was attached to it.

One such itch, Julie found herself in the loft, staring into a guitar. It was...beautiful. The six-stringed electric guitar had a fine layer of dust on it, but that did nothing to detract from its beauty. The deep blue and black body had once been polished to a gleam, unmarred by fingerprints. She touched it. No memories of her mom were attached to it; unlike the grand piano, which still had a cover over it after all those months. The guitar was new. Unmarked. A fresh start. How she could bounce back, a rubber ball heading for life.

After the guitar entered her life, Julie found herself wanting to play more and more often. Something had changed in the studio. The piano still remained covered and unlooked at. But sometimes, out-of-tune, discordant electric guitar could be heard. The ruby red bass and the drum set remained untouched, also. In Julie’s mind, there was only the electric guitar.

The first notes played on that guitar after twenty-five years were quiet and cautious. The guitar’s previous holder had always known, even as a child, that the spirit of music flowed through him. This new one had once known, but had abandoned and buried the knowledge. But with each pluck of a string, each shift of a finger, a bit of that buried knowledge came a little closer to the light. Julie had not found a rhythm yet, but the beginnings of one were in her heartbeat. Soon, the music would be back inside her, almost as if it had never left. Her playing got stronger as she taught herself how to hold the guitar, what strings to play, what fingerings to hold. She played only one chord.

She could not bring herself to do more. Yet. She never sang. What she could do, and what she did do, was scream.

Julie screamed for what felt like hours. She hit the same notes over and over and over again. No rhythm emerged. There were only Julie’s pure, unfiltered emotions. Anger and grief and anguish poured into one primal sound.

Until her throat felt like sandpaper and her tongue begged for water and her voice became a raspy whisper,

Julie screamed.

To Julie, the combination was pure catharsis. She finally felt free. Hitting the off-beat, out-of-tune notes, filling her sounds with unsaid words. Julie _thrashed_ around the studio, Julie _dived_ onto the couch, and Julie _thundered_ up and down the stairs to the loft. No one else touched the studio but Julie, and if she wanted to use it as her own personal stage and pit combination, then she would.

Julie lost herself to the cocktail of emotions running through her veins, only coming alive with the weight of the guitar on her shoulders. It felt better, more releasing than any exercise Dr. Turner had given her, ever. She looked inside herself, and woke up.

She often awoke from her fits of emotion with bloodshot eyes and salty tracks drying on her cheeks; shirt sticking to her body with sweat and her strings leaving indents in her fingers. Many days, hours passed before the adrenaline wore off and she left the studio, and all its memories and emotions, behind.

When the adrenaline wore off one such day, she found herself in the loft, looking in a small cardboard box. In the box was a CD. The name Sunset Curve was on the outside of the jacket. On the inside was a disk, and a picture of four boys. The boy in front, shaggy brown hair and no sleeves on his shirt, was holding the same guitar that Julie had taken to calling her own subconsciously. Curiosity overtaking her, she pulled out the disk and blacked it delicately in the CD player.

“ _Why not?_ ” Julie thought. “ _I don’t have anything to lose._ ”

Then, with the sounds of electric guitars and screaming and discord, Julie’s life changed for the second time with the same beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Title/summary from Hozier's To Noise Making (Sing)  
> Like it? Hate it? Want more? Please tell me! Consider giving kudos!


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